Harald), to seek tendance for his wounds.  This man had spent most of his life in camp; but at last, after the grievous end of his general, he had retreated into this lonely district, where he lived the life of a peasant, and rested from the pursuits of war.  Often struck himself by the missiles of the enemy, he had gained no slight skill in leechcraft by constantly tending his own wounds.  But if anyone came with flatteries to seek his aid, instead of curing him he was accustomed to give him something that would secretly injure him, thinking it somewhat nobler to threaten than to wheedle for benefits.  When the soldiers of Erik menaced his house, in their desire to take Halfdan, he so robbed them of the power of sight that they could neither perceive the house nor trace it with certainty, though it was close to them.  So utterly had their eyesight been dulled by a decisive mist.

When Halfdan had by this man’s help regained his full strength, he summoned Thore, a champion of notable capacity, and proclaimed war against Erik.  But when the forces were led out on the other side, and he saw that Erik was superior in numbers, he hid a part of his army, and instructed it to lie in ambush among the bushes by the wayside, in order to destroy the enemy by an ambuscade as he marched through the narrow part of the path.  Erik foresaw this, having reconnoitred his means of advancing, and thought he must withdraw for fear, if he advanced along the track he had intended, of being hard-pressed by the tricks of the enemy among the steep windings of the hills.  They therefore joined battle, force against force, in a deep valley, inclosed all round by lofty mountain ridges.  Here Halfdan, when he saw the line of his men wavering, climbed with Thore up a crag covered with stones and, uprooting boulders, rolled them down upon the enemy below; and the weight of these as they fell crushed the line that was drawn up in the lower position.  Thus he regained with stones the victory which he had lost with arms.  For this deed of prowess he received the name of Biargramm ("rock strong"), a word which seems to have been compounded from the name of his fierceness and of the mountains.  He soon gained so much esteem for this among the Swedes that he was thought to be the son of the great Thor, and the people bestowed divine honours upon him, and judged him worthy of public libation.

But the souls of the conquered find it hard to rest, and the insolence of the beaten ever struggles towards the forbidden thing.  So it came to pass that Erik, in his desire to repair the losses incurred in flight, attacked the districts subject to Halfdan.  Even Denmark he did not exempt from this harsh treatment; for he thought it a most worthy deed to assail the country of the man who had caused him to be driven from his own.  And so, being more anxious to inflict injury than to repel it, he set Sweden free from the arms of the enemy.  When Halfdan heard that his brother Harald had been beaten by Erik in three battles,